The holidays are long over, so you better start planning your next one!

Many of us are still recovering from the end of year holidays, but January is actually the perfect time to plan the next one. The Easter break in April provides a great excuse for a mid-year getaway and what better place to go than Rome?

The Italian capital is an incredible place to visit at any time of the year, but even more so during Easter. Rome comes alive as the Vatican City celebrates the Christian holy week and whether you’re religious or not, it really is worth a visit. Tens of thousands of pilgrims and inquisitive tourists visit Saint Peter’s Square to attend one of the Pope’s numerous public masses. The pageantry associated with Easter in Rome is simply breathtaking.

A walking tour of the city is one of the best ways to experience all that Rome has to offer during this busy holiday season. Take a stroll through the ancient Roman Forum or visit the historic Colosseum. The beautiful Spanish Steps and the world-renowned Trevi Fountain should also be firmly placed on every tourist’s itinerary when visiting the city.

You can download free audio guides to some of the hottest attractions in and around Rome. Check out the audio walking tour of the city or explore some of the famous districts, squares and streets of Rome.

Happy travels in 2012!

1000 Words or More

The holiday season is fast approaching and travel plans are being finalised. Because most of you won't be travelling with every friend and family member you have, it means you'll be leaving some people behind. The good news is that you don't have to with hummba. Taking a Footprint photo album on hummba means that you track your travels and all your photographs are geo tagged to the place they were taken. So? So, your friends and family can experience your holiday without even having to leave the house.

The holiday season also brings out the photographer in all of us, and why not? So, to make sure that your photographs and Footprints are the best possible version of virtual travel for your friends and family, I've included some photography tips to keep you snap happy.

1. Get down on their level. First time photographer want the camera to do all the work but to get really great pics, start moving! Get closer, get down, get the right photo.
2. Use a plain background. The sky is always a good one.
3. Use your flash outdoors. Most camera phones come complete with a flash, try it out - you'll be surprised at the results.
4. Move in close. Don't rely on your zoom - pictures lose quality when you're shooting the folds of elephant flesh a kilometer away. Move in rather than zoom in.
5. Take some vertical photos. Don't be limited to horizontal pics - shake it up.
6. Lock the focus. Find the object that you want to focus on. Start with the obvious at first and see how interesting you can make it.
7. Know your flashes range. Be sure to play with all the functions of your camera phone to know what is possible and what is not.
8. Watch the light. Bad lighting can ruin a photo or even a number of photos taken at the same time, in the same place. Camera phones aren't usually as sophisticated as quality digital cameras so be sure that the light is at the right angle to prevent pics that are so dark you can't make anything out.
9. Move it from the middle. Center your photos at first to get nice, clean, balanced pics.
10. Be a picture Director. Own it. Its your shot, take it the way you want it.

And then, upload them onto hummba.com. A mobile application and social network that lets you upload your geo tagged Footprint photo albums directly from your mobile phone.

Do the Locco Mobile

Bloggers speak an unspoken language with other bloggers. We speak Blog, we check updates of our favourites, we secretly crit, we search for ideas and clues about what to write. We're crazy. In short. So my daily walk around cyberspace led me to an article about - yes you guessed it - mobile phones.

Now, I've complained before about the demise of the world and how it has to do with the fact that communication is now almost safer because we can lie to each other digitally and collectively, we're none the wiser. A fellow blogger and I shared the same sentiment briefly. He had a point, he called mobile phones the most intrusive human invention yet.

He professes disgust at the fact that his last few dates couldn't get through starters without checking her phone, how kids in the same vicinity aren't talking to each other but rather to their other friends on MXIT. In essence, he boldly declared that cell phones give us a false sense of importance and in truth...we aren't that important. All true but mobile phones are here to stay. They're our other appendage. Instead of acting as our appendix, they're now our right hand. Make friends is what I say.

I'm still in the infant stages of mobile phone usage, my style is more classic with calls and text messages and the occasional MP3 download. However, I am a fan of the "possibilities." If my hope has to rest on the advances that cell phone technology makes than so be it. We're all playing the Transformers game anyway, in some way or another, so I say...let your cell phone take the heavy end.

One of the most notable advances in cell phone technology is the inclusion of GPS. So now you can bend the truth about where you are verbally...but your GPS co-ordinate doesn't lie. And thank goodness really because now you can use your cell phone in conjunction with hummba.com to become your own personal tour guide while you're on holiday. Visit hummba.com and download FREE audio clips to your GPS enabled phone and what do you know...you'll here all about the Eiffel Tower while trying to construct the perfect pic of you touching the top of it. Good times. But don't take my word for it...its the technology age, the age that never gets old. Visit www.hummba.com for more.